Entertainment

The Sims Strike Back! EA Sues Zynga Over Similarities in 'The Ville'

In a move that surprised few gamers who have played both The Sims Social and The Ville, Electronic Arts sued Zynga Friday — charging that the latter was a blatant copy of the former.

EA didn't mince words, either. "The copying was so comprehensive that the two games are, to an uninitiated observer, largely indistinguishable," said Lucy Bradshaw, General Manager of Maxis (the EA subsidiary that produces all Sims games). "Zynga's design choices, animations, visual arrangements and character motions and actions have been directly lifted from The Sims Social ... scores of media and bloggers have commented on the blatant mimicry." (Indeed, we have.)

We've heard from sources inside Zynga that the mimicry was obvious to all there when The Ville was launched, too, and led to something of a crisis of confidence within the company. Still, Zynga put its game face on.

"It's unfortunate that EA thought that this was an appropriate response to our game, and clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic copyright principles," said Zynga general counsel Reggie Davis in a statement. And for an audacious encore, he added: "It's also ironic that EA brings this suit shortly after launching SimCity Social which bears an uncanny resemblance to Zynga's CityVille game."

Cue howls of laughter from anyone with basic knowledge of gaming history. Sim City is one of the oldest franchises in the world of digital games. The original, by industry legend Will Wright, dates back to 1989 — when Zynga CEO Mark Pincus was just entering business school.

Indeed, it's going to be a breeze for EA's lawyers to show a longstanding pattern of game-copying behavior on Zynga's part. Several former Zynga employees have stated in the past that the company's breakout hit — FarmVille — was a blatant copy of a game called Farm Town. Mafia Wars is Mob Wars, Ruby Blast is Bejeweled, Pioneer Trail is Oregon Trail ... and the list goes on. (Check the similarities out in our gallery below.)

It's also not hard to see why EA made this move now. Zynga is under siege: its share price is plummeting; the company has no clear road map; it's also been hit by another lawsuit charging senior management with insider trading, for dumping their stock right before a poor earnings report.

As Bradshaw said: "Maxis isn't the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product. But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it ... By calling Zynga out on this illegal practice, we hope to have a secondary effect of protecting the rights of other creative studios who don't have the resources to protect themselves."

What do you make of this lawsuit? Give us your take in the comments.

8 Zynga Hits That Look Suspiciously Like Other Games

The genre of "match three" games is largely uninventive — plenty of games have tried to put various spins on the same puzzle concept. But Zynga's Ruby Blast (right) borrows very heavily from one gameplay mode in PopCap's popular game, Bejeweled.

In Bejewled's "Diamond Mine" mode, you need to match groups of three or more gems to dig deeper into a mine to explore for buried treasure. The further you dig successfully, more time is added to your clock. Ruby Blast, released just two weeks ago, employs this same gameplay technique: Players search for buried treasure to increase their experience, and race against the clock to dig deeper into a mine.

Parker Brothers hasn't been the best at protecting its property, or the quickest to jump into the digital world. Words with Friends, an obvious Scrabble clone originally made by Newtoy, became one of the most popular mobile games of the last few years. Zynga then purchased Newtoy, and has been releasing a slew of "With Friends" titles ever since.

Scramble With Friends is another board game classic-turned-mobile, simply because Boggle didn't enter the online space quickly enough. In both titles, players are asked to find words scrambled in a square of letters. While Boggle isn't squarely in the online space, it's safe to say it came up with the idea first.

The idea of a farming simulation can be traced back to older games, like Harvest Moon, but there is something distinctively similar between Farm Town (top) and FarmVille (bottom).

Farm Town was released earlier in 2009 than FarmVille by developer Slashkey. Both rely on building your farm and planting crops, though FarmVille has added many more features and decorative options to take advantage of the freemium game model. Even more confusing, a similar Chinese game named Happy Farm looks a lot like the other two titles.

In 2008, as Facebook was gaining steam, its users were being sucked into acheivement-based games that pitted them against their friends in silly scenarios. One of the early, popular titles was Mob Wars, which was reported to be making several thousand dollars a day off users as it delved into a crime-ridden text adventure.

Mafia Wars was released by Zynga soon afterward. It featured a very similar interface and story elements, so much so that Mob Wars creator David Maestri sued Zynga. The lawsuit was settled for $7-9 million, a large chunk of change early in Zynga's career. Both games still exist, along with a Mafia Wars 2 title.

Last year, Tiny Tower took cellphones by storm, as people became addicted to building their own massive buildings and filling them with sims.

In January 2012, Zynga released its own tower-building sim named Dream Heights, and it immediately got the attention of Tiny Tower's creators, NimbleBit. Developer Ian Marsh released an open letter to Zynga, comparing the two side-by-side. The games share many elements, down to the tutorials and the level presentation.

Anyone who was a student from a certain era remembers the original Oregon Trail, which made learning fun as you traveled across the wild frontier of the 1800s trying to avoid dysentery. The game was still being published and updated through present day, with the last version releasing in 2011.

Zynga's released FrontierVille in 2010. Although it was originally like FarmVille, Zynga released an expansion in 2011 named Pioneer Trail, which asked players to cross several maps of wilderness to get to their new homesteads. It's hard to think this is anything other an uncreative nod to Oregon Trail.

Just last week, Zynga announced a new Facebook title: The Ville. Even in the earliest screenshots, it was hard not to ignore the glaring resemblances to one of the longest running, most popular simulation games ever: The Sims, especially EA's Sims Social for Facebook. In an area where Maxis and EA planted their flag firmly, wouldn't it be hard to blatantly copy them? Apparently not.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.